Thinking Outside the Box

20 July 2022

What’s a four-letter word for “prejudiced view”? Try bias: A short word with an unusual vowel arrangement, it’s the sort of term you might find in a typical crossword. And Amy Reynaldo ’88, the author of How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle and coeditor of the Crosswords with Friends app, routinely sees bias in crosswords even when the word doesn’t appear. Look closely, she notes, and you’ll see that the clues and answers in a puzzle often reflect the worldview of their authors— typically straight white guys.

Reynaldo is a fierce advocate for change within the industry, eager to see more puzzles created by people of color, women, nonbinary folks, and others excluded from the old boys’ club. “Representation matters,” she says. One long-used puzzle clue, for example, is “married couple’s towels.” But the standard answer, “hisandhers,” can be jarring to wedded LBGTQ folks.

Similarly, Reynaldo suggests, a male editor would be unlikely to remove a clue/answer combo like “Left-handed batter Melvin.” “If you play crosswords, you know the answer is Mel Ott,” she says. “But if an author inserts OPI, a nail-polish brand familiar to most women, a male editor is probably going to respond that nobody knows what that is.”

Things are changing, however. USA Today hired Erik Agard, a Black editor, to oversee crosswords in 2021, and the Los Angeles Times recently appointed a woman, Patti Varol, to edit puzzles. “We’ve seen improvements in the last few years,” Reynaldo says. “People are realizing that our reference points aren’t always universal.”

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